Men Made in America Mega-Bundle

by Gayle Wilson, Marie Ferrarella, Jennifer Greene, Annette Broadrick, Judith Arnold, Rita Herron, Anne Stuart, Diana Palmer, Elizabeth Bevarly, Patricia Rosemoor, Emilie Richards

  Alison gave up. There was no point in saying that she was perfectly capable of paying for both of them. Who was Kevin going to baby once she was gone? She’d put in her application to several medically depressed areas in the country and gotten back favorable responses. At this point she was just trying to decide which to accept. Kevin was going to have a lot of adjusting to do.

  But for now she humored him. “We’ll pick up something on the way.”

  Maybe you can pick up a wife on the way.

  Almost in a trance, Luc stopped walking. “A wife.”

  Alison and Kevin turned in unison to look at Luc, both stunned.

  Maybe she’d heard wrong. “What?”

  Luc looked at them, just as surprised as they were by what had just come out of his mouth. Very carefully he examined the words that had flashed through his head. But even now they were fading away.

  “Someone said that to me…I think. Something about…looking for a wife, picking up a wife on the way. Something like that.” It made less and less sense the more he said it.

  Alison laughed shortly. “I didn’t know they were holding a wife special at the mall.” At best, it was an odd clue to the man’s identity. Did he mean picking up his wife, she wondered. Could that be it? He was married and meeting his wife?

  Luc tried to hear a voice, attach a face to the speaker, but it was like dropping cotton candy into the water. The words, the memory was dissolving before he could reach it.

  “It had something to do with my coming here. Or maybe not,” he added with a helpless shrug of his shoulders. None of it was getting any clearer. If anything, it was becoming murkier.

  For all he knew, the line that had echoed in his mind might have been something he’d heard in a movie or a television program.

  He looked as if he was getting exasperated. She couldn’t blame him. Wanting to distract Luc, she said, “Let’s go get you settled in.”

  To Kevin, it seemed like an odd way to put it. “What’s there to settle? The man has nothing but the clothes on his back.”

  Kevin was right. Luc was going to need something else to wear. She scrutinized Luc closely. “Jimmy’s about the same size,” she judged.

  “Better check with Jimmy first,” Kevin cautioned. In all likelihood, Jimmy would be generous, but you never knew. “You know how he is about his clothes.”

  She laughed, remembering the one time she’d needed a tailored shirt and had to pilfer it out of Jimmy’s closet. The tirade when he discovered the loss had been unbelievable. Especially after he’d seen the wine stains. “Beau Brummell was probably more willing to give his clothes away.”

  “Beau Brummell. Nineteenth-century figure, known for his penchant for finery. Friend of the prince of Wales.”

  She and Kevin exchanged looks, then turned to look at Luc, who appeared a little amazed himself. He had no idea where that had come from.

  “Maybe you’re an encyclopedia salesman,” Kevin suggested, only half kidding.

  Luc shrugged. “Right now, that sounds as right as anything.”

  Like a child on his first trip away from home, he watched the scenery go by outside the car window. Trying to absorb everything. Feeling a little lost, a little uncertain.

  Except in his case, Luc hadn’t a clue where home actually was. All he knew, and not even with any amount of certainty, was that it wasn’t here.

  “You’re trying too hard.”

  Her voice, soft, understanding, drew his attention back to the car he was in. And to her. “What?”

  She’d noted his reflection in the window when they’d stopped at the last traffic light. Alison could have sworn she could see his eyes getting tread worn. Though she’d never experienced anything remotely like amnesia, she could well imagine how frustrating it had to be for him. To think and not remember. To exist and have absolutely no memory of it.

  “You’re trying too hard. To remember,” she added after a moment. “Sometimes, things come when you least expect them.”

  Luc turned around to face her. Something she’d said was nudging a piece of a thought in his mind. Setting it off.

  But it was shimmering just out of reach, just out of focus. For all he knew, it could be animal, vegetable or mineral. For the time being, he left it alone. Not that he had much choice in the matter.

  “Yeah, maybe you’re right.” Maybe if he allowed his mind to remain a blank, the pieces would eventually turn up.

  He saw her grin and felt something stir inside him in response. The grin was sensual, but innocent at the same time. More questions came to mind, but this time they had to do with her.

  “I usually am.” And then Alison laughed. “Not that anyone in my family likes to admit it.”

  Family. The word created ripples of a feeling that passed over him. Again it defied capture. He couldn’t quite make it his. Maybe if he kept her talking, the feeling would crystallize into something he could identify.

  “How many are there in your family?”

  “Four, counting me.” It had been four for a very long time. Her mother had died when she was eight, her father three years after that. For all intents and purposes, Kevin was as much her parent as he was her brother. “You met Kevin and Jimmy. Among the missing, but only for the moment, is Lily.” She grinned again. They were as different as night and day, she and her sister. Lily was the sophisticate. “Lily recently moved out to live over the restaurant she bought into.”

  Lily had finally managed to buy out the other owners and rechristen the restaurant. There was no doubt in her mind that within the year, Lily’s would become the trendy place to go in Seattle. Lily wouldn’t have it any other way.

  Alison glanced at Luc as she took a side street. It wasn’t far now. “In case you haven’t noticed, we’re all eager little beavers in my family.”

  “I noticed.” Except that he would have used the word enterprising, he thought, then wondered where the word had come from. “And you’re the youngest.”

  She laughed and nodded. At times, it was more of a condition than a chronological position. “And they never let me forget it.” She hesitated, then decided to prod a little. Who knew? It might actually help. “Do you think you have any family?”

  He’d been asking himself the same thing. With no results. “I don’t know, but I don’t think so, at least not in the traditional way.” He tried to make sense of it for himself as well as her. “There’s this vague feeling that there’s someone, but…not really.”

  That didn’t make a hell of a whole lot of sense, did it, he thought. And yet he couldn’t shake the feeling that there had been someone, someone important, who wasn’t there anymore. Had they died? A hollow feeling took hold of him as the realization sank in. Someone important to him could have died recently and he didn’t even know.

  Without thinking, she slipped her hand over his in mute comfort, then replaced it on the steering wheel. “Sounds like a ghost.”

  “That,” he agreed. “Or something that wasn’t.” The words drifted from his lips slowly, just as the thought had drifted in. It wasn’t the death of a person that he was feeling, but of something. What did that mean?

  “I don’t follow you.”

  That made two of them, he thought ruefully. “Sorry, it’s just something that seemed to pop into my head and then out again.” And he couldn’t make a damn bit of sense out of it.

  She didn’t want him getting too frustrated, not when she thought he was still weak.

  “Well, when it pops back in, try to hang on to it. Something tells me those missing pieces of your puzzle are doing their damnedest to try to show up again.” Pulling up to a compact, two-story house, she parked at the curb. They took turns using the garage. This week, Kevin’s car and Jimmy’s motorcycle got to stay out of Seattle’s daily mist. “In the meantime, this is where you can crash.”

  “Crash?”

  She shut off the engine and got out. “Set up your tent.” Walking ahead of him, she led the way to the detached garage. There w
as a wooden staircase on the side closer to the house. “Park your body. You know, stay.”

  For the first time since he’d opened his eyes, amusement materialized. “Do you always use this many words?”

  She took the wooden stairs two at a time. “I love the sound of words.” Reaching the landing, she unlocked the door. She turned around and waited for him to join her. “I was going to become an English teacher, but then I thought that wouldn’t make enough of a difference.” She let him walk in first.

  The room was small, made smaller by the presence of a queen-size bed and a massive chest of drawers that had once occupied the master bedroom. “Does that mean a lot to you, making a difference?”

  There was no way she could put into words just how much it did mean. No one really knew or understood. Sometimes, the feeling even left her a little mystified.

  “When you’re the littlest and the youngest, you have a tendency to want to be the loudest just to be noticed. I want to make a difference, to know that because of me, someone feels better. Is better.” That’s why nursing had seemed so right to her. It allowed her the time to hold a patient’s hand, to offer comfort. In order to heal, the spirit had to be helped along as well as the body. Hearing herself, Alison stopped abruptly. “I’m talking too much.”

  He didn’t want her to stop. “No, please, talk. Listening to you helps fill up the empty spaces in my head.”

  For some reason, there wasn’t enough air in the room. She’d never noticed how small the room was. How tight the space around the bed seemed. There was no place to back up and suddenly she felt as if she needed to.

  “You should be filling them up with your own thoughts.”

  He smiled at the irony of her words. “I seem to have misplaced them. Temporarily I hope.”

  “Do you think you’re married?” She had no idea where the question came from. Or why she wanted to know. Her curiosity didn’t feel idle, but active. It made her uneasy. Trying to move around Luc, Alison maneuvered toward the door and opened it.

  “I don’t know.” He searched, recalled nothing. “What does being married feel like?”

  It took effort not to shiver as she remembered her own short, disastrous venture. Buried two years in her past, the mark it had left behind was still vivid. “Like you can’t breathe.”

  “Then I’m not married.”

  He probably thought she was strange, if not crazy. Needing something to do, she crossed to the window, opening it. The room hadn’t been aired out since their cousin had come to spend the holidays with them last Christmas. “Sorry, that was harsh. I shouldn’t have said that.”

  She needed to be moving all the time. Was that because she had so much energy to spare, or was she trying to outdistance something? There’d been a note in her voice he couldn’t quite recognize. Not that, he thought, he’d recognize a hell of a whole lot right now.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I just shouldn’t have.” Why couldn’t he leave it at that? It was his mind they needed to explore, not hers. “Besides, you’re a stranger.”

  “And your husband wouldn’t like you talking to strangers,” he guessed.

  “I’m not married.” He probably didn’t make the connection, or remember at any rate. “I live here, remember?”

  Luc watched her fuss with the bedspread. “Yes, it’s just that I thought maybe you lived here with your husband. You sounded so adamant just now, about marriage.”

  She had, too. Probably too adamant. Alison ran her hand along her neck, trying to lighten the moment. “It’s been a rough day. I was almost mugged.”

  His eyes met hers. Humor glinted in them. “Yeah, I know.”

  It felt as if his eyes were touching her. Air became thick in her throat, almost solidifying. She turned away, unsettled by the pull she felt. “There’s a tiny bathroom in the back. No shower, but you can wash your hands. I know it’s not much, but—”

  “I don’t need much,” he assured her. There was no need to apologize. She and her brother were being more than kind, taking in a stranger. “And I appreciate you and your brothers letting me stay here.”

  The image of a small room, dark but warm, flashed through his brain, remaining in less time than it took to identify it.

  Alison touched his arm, drawing his attention back into the room above the garage. “What is it?”

  He blinked, trying to focus. Aware only of the fact that she was standing very close to him again. And that she wore a fragrance that reminded him of—what? “Hmm?”

  “You just had a very strange look on your face. Did you just remember something?”

  “A half of something,” he allowed. “A room.” He turned around slowly, taking in the details of the room for the first time. The room in his mind had been cheerier. “Kind of like this. It was dark. Outside,” he realized, “it was dark.”

  “Nighttime,” she guessed.

  He was about to agree, then stopped. “No, it wasn’t. It was daytime.”

  Then why was it dark? “A storm?” Or maybe his mind was playing tricks on him.

  It sounded like a logical guess, but he couldn’t really say for sure. “I don’t know.”

  Her heart went out to him. In his place, she wouldn’t have known if she could stand it as calmly as he was. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be plying you with questions. It’s just that I keep thinking if I ask the right one, suddenly everything’ll come back to you.”

  He smiled, grateful for her help. She made him feel less alone. “It beats you hitting me on the head, hoping that might jar the thoughts back into my brain.”

  She’d seen a cartoon like that once. Maybe, subconsciously, he was remembering the same one. “If everything else fails, maybe we’ll fall back on that.” She remembered Kevin giving Luc money for dinner. She’d forgotten to stop at the store. “Why don’t you follow me into the house and we can see what there is in the refrigerator to heat up?” If she was lucky, Lily had stopped by to stock it for them.

  “Sounds like a plan, and since I don’t seem to have any previous engagements that I’m aware of, I happen to be free.” He opened the door and waited for her to step through.

  Something sizzled in her veins as she did so. Surprised, she suppressed it.

  Chapter Four

  The kitchen was state-of-the-art, with highly polished, copper pots and pans hanging from ceiling hooks arranged in a rectangle that encompassed the fluorescent light fixture. A butcher-block island stood in the middle, unadorned and vacant, while a blue-tiled utility bar housed only newspapers from days past and a small television set that was dormant at the moment.

  It was a kitchen waiting in vain to be pressed into service.

  This had been Lily’s domain. For a time, Alison had felt intimidated and inadequate just walking into it until she’d made her peace with the fact that she enjoyed eating sandwiches and two-minute microwave specials.

  Leading the way in, she opened both sides of the refrigerator, allowing Luc a full view of the interior. It was Jimmy’s turn to go shopping. Which would explain why there was so little within the “magic box,” as she used to call it when she was a little girl. Back then, her mother had presided here and she could remember warm, wonderful smells coupled with a feeling of well-being coming from this room. There’d been no pots hanging from the ceiling, no butcher-block island then, only a breakfast nook. And love.

  Until everything had changed.

  “Okay.” She glanced over her shoulder at Luc. “What’s your pleasure?”

  The question caught him unprepared. He’d just allowed his mind to wander, to dwell on the woman who had taken him under her wing because, according to her, he’d come to her rescue. He wished he could remember at least that part. But he couldn’t.

  Instead, what was teasing his mind now was the very real, very strong attraction he was experiencing standing so close to her. Pleasure was the word for it, all right.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Food.” She gestured toward the
open freezer. Stacked inside were several colorful boxes, the names on the side hinting at culinary heaven in under five minutes. She tilted her head so that she could read the labels better. Her hair brushed along his bare arm, sending ripples of current through him. “We have frozen pot pie, frozen Mexican entrée, frozen—” Straightening, she looked at him with a self-depreciating smile. “Well, pretty much frozen everything.”

  He was more interested in the other side of the refrigerator. Edging her to the side, he indicated the contents on the lower two shelves. “You’ve got some vegetables and a carton of eggs.”

  There was no point in even mentioning that. “I don’t want to add ptomaine poisoning to your list of troubles.” She began to close that side of the refrigerator.

  He placed his hand in the way, stopping her. “Why, are they spoiled?” Reaching inside, he picked up the larger of the two red peppers languishing beside the three sprigs of broccoli and pressed his fingers along the sides. “Feels pretty firm to me.”

  She had no idea why she was identifying with an inanimate object. Why she could almost feel his fingertips pressing her skin. Maybe, she decided, because Luc wasn’t quite real. Without a memory, he could be anyone, like a fantasy come to life for a brief spate of time. Once his memory returned, he’d be gone.

  And she would remain unthreatened.

  “They’re not spoiled—” she agreed. “Yet. But they would be by the time I get through with whatever I tried to make.” A person had to know her limitations. This was one of hers. “We have a division of labor here as far as the kitchen goes,” she explained, taking the pepper from him and returning it to its place. “Whenever she stops by, Lily creates, Kevin cooks, Jimmy warms up and I destroy.” She made it a point to stay out of the kitchen, except to eat, whenever humanly possible.

  He couldn’t quite wrap his mind around what she was saying. “You can’t be as bad as all that.”

  “I wouldn’t place any bets on that if I were you.” She glanced overhead at the pan hanging closest to her. “I stand a better chance winning a tennis match with a frying pan than I do making an edible meal with it.”